Longevity.
A long continuance. That’s what I think of as this fall has unfolded. Because this is the first fall in over a decade that my wife and I have been able to focus our weekend sports attention solely on the Penn State football team.
When your son plays youth sports – club and scholastic – and then joins a college football team that isn’t Penn State, your weekend sports focus is rightly and lovingly elsewhere. And ours has been that way, as I said, for more than a decade.
But what a season to be back in the Penn State football swing of things, huh?
So here we are, as loyal Penn State fans, asking ourselves the same question millions of other Penn State fans are asking themselves: Who will be the next “official” Penn State football head coach? A question we haven’t often had to deal with. (Does Cael Sanderson want to coach football?!)
Because longevity has been the watchword for Penn State football head coaches for over a century. When I was born, Rip Engle was a little more than halfway through a 16-year reign as Penn State head coach. He had taken over from Joe Bedenk, who was an oddity at Penn State as he only coached for one season.
But prior to Bedenk, Bob Higgins had coached for 19 years, taking over from Hugo Bezdek who had coached for 12 years. Which takes us all the way back to 1917. That’s a long way back!
And we all know who took over from Rip Engle when he retired. Joe Paterno coached Penn State for 45 full seasons and part of a 46th — the longest tenure by a major college coach at one institution. Longevity.
Then Bill O’Brien only coached for two seasons and returned us very briefly to the odd-man-out Joe Bedenk days of 1949. But James Franklin then came aboard as head coach and was head coach for 11 full seasons and part of a 12th until that fateful Sunday two weeks ago.
Again, longevity. It’s something we Penn State football fans have come to expect from our head coaches.
But, moving forward, is that the sort of reality we Penn State fans should expect? Or even want? Especially if the goal for the football team is to win a national championship.
Over the last decade-plus Penn State football has benchmarked itself against other top teams and made changes to the way things were always done. Upgraded practice facilities, jet travel instead of turboprops, more money to salaries and benefits, heck, even metal detectors at the stadium gates are just a few of the ways Penn State is keeping up with the proverbial major college football Joneses.
Maybe head football coach longevity is something that also needs to move forward into the 21st century? I mean, if the goal is to win national championships, how long should it really take a head coach to achieve that goal?
Apparently, the answer is not long.
Using the NCAA’s list of FBS football champions, below are the 15 head coaches whose teams have won national titles this century, and the number of years it took for them to win their first national title with each respective team (Urban Meyer and Nick Saban won titles with two different teams). In parentheses is the team they won it with and the year:
- Larry Coker – 1 year (Miami, 2001)
- Bob Stoops – 2 years (Oklahoma, 2000)
- Jim Tressel – 2 years (Ohio State, 2002)
- Urban Meyer – 2 years (Florida, 2006)
- Gene Chizik – 2 years (Auburn, 2010)
- Pete Carroll – 3 years (USC, 2003)
- Les Miles – 3 years (LSU, 2007)
- Nick Saban – 3 years (Alabama, 2009)
- Urban Meyer – 3 years (Ohio State, 2014)
- Ed Orgeron – 3 years (LSU, 2019)
- Nick Saban – 4 years (LSU, 2003)
- Jimbo Fisher – 4years (FSU, 2013)
- Kirby Smart – 6 years (Georgia, 2021)
- Ryan Day – 6.5 years (Ohio State, 2024)
- Mack Brown – 8 years (Texas, 2005)
- Dabo Swinney – 8 years (Clemson, 2016)
- Jim Harbaugh – 9 years (Michigan, 2023)
As you can see, the majority of these coaches won their first national championship with their team in four years or less. And the longest tenured first-time winner was Jim Harbaugh at nine years. Maybe coaching longevity is not a necessary thing if an elusive national title is the goal.
Based on how things are going this season, it certainly appears that this short-tenure, title-winning trend is continuing. We’re well into the season, which means this year’s national title winning team is probably ranked – and likely highly so. Let’s take a look at the top 10 teams in the latest AP football poll, and how many seasons has each head coach been coaching that team? Here they are:
- Ohio State – Ryan Day, 7th season
- Indiana – Curt Cignetti, 2nd season
- Texas A&M – Mike Elko, 2nd season
- Alabama – Kalen DeBoer, 2nd season
- Georgia – Kirby Smart, 10th season
- Oregon – Dan Lanning, 4th season
- Ole Miss – Lane Kiffin, 6th season
- Georgia Tech – Brent Key, 3rd season
- Vanderbilt – Clark Lea, 5th season
- Miami – Mario Cristobal, 4th season
BYU — Kalani Sitake, 10th season
Of the three longest-tenured coaches in the top 10 – Ryan Day, Kirby Smart and Kalani Sitake – two, Day and Smart, have already won national titles with their teams. And six of the other coaches are in their fourth season or less. If this year’s national champion comes out of this group, unless BYU wins the title it will be a coach with six years or less at their school. The short-term, national-title-winning head coaching trend seems like it will continue.
Which brings us back to longevity and Penn State head football coaches.
Maybe, just maybe, as the powers-that-be have continued to change things to make Penn State like every other major college football program, even going so far as to charge money to have a company name painted on the Beaver Stadium grass (anyone else think the karma for this may be responsible for the team’s performance this season?), maybe head coaching longevity is another thing that needs to change if a national championship is the goal.
Penn State is the only one of the top 10 winningest all-time football teams to have neither won nor played for a national title this century. Perhaps that’s something that should change.
If it does, this means we Penn State football fans might need to learn to live with shorter term head coaches the same way we’ve learned to live with the other changes to the program. Especially if the head coach can’t achieve the primary goal within a few years.
I guess in this age of instant gratification and ubiquitous information, longevity is just not a 21st century concept, especially when it comes to national-title-winning head football coaches.
